The present invention relates to a control apparatus for a system of monitoring and controlling a plant, which control apparatus is preferably applied to, for example, a power plant to monitor its operational status.
Generally, in the power plant, a system is set up in which a plant monitor unit and a computer unit such as a maintenance tool are arranged in a central control room, these units are coupled to a control unit of boiler control system and a control unit of turbine control system through a network and control equipments associated with individual sections of the plant are operated on the basis of operation commands from the plant monitor unit or control commands from the control units.
Responsive to a request made by an operator, the plant monitor unit outputs commands for individual control equipments and displays plant information on, for example, a display unit in order to offer various kinds of control information and deliver guidance. The maintenance tool is a unit adapted to carry out maintenance operation for the control unit, having functions of preparing logics for control of the plant, loading the logics on the control unit and monitoring an operation process in the control unit.
In this type of monitoring and controlling system, in order to maintain a constant output with the aim of preventing the control equipment from operating responsive to control commands from the control unit during inspection of the control equipment and in order for the result of simulation of control theory for a control unit not to affect another control unit, the function to perform mass setting and cancelling of simulated data to and from input/output data and transmission data as well can be utilized.
Information as to what kind of simulated data is set to which input/output data and to which transmission data is managed through a list table by means of the maintenance tool, permitting the maintenance tool to execute the setting and cancelling of simulated data. Pieces of information such as simulated data to be set are managed with the help of the list table and therefore, a risk of missing the cancelling can be eliminated.
An example of this type of monitoring system is described in JP-A-2002-244722.